Happy Fourth of July for those Americans who are here! I'll be taking tomorrow off as I kick back for a day off!
The Fourth is always capped with excellent fireworks shows and we have been witness to some big fireworks in comics recently.
But none have been bigger than the recent destruction of the Fortress of Solitude at the hand of Superman himself.
At the end of The Man of Steel #4, Superman vaporized his Fortress in an attempt to take down Rogol Zaar quickly.
BOOM!
Great image!
And, of course, this has some emotional resonance for Clark. He has destroyed his home, his ties to Krypton. In some ways, he is doing what Zaar wanted.
But ...
He isn't the first Kryptonian to destroy their Fortress with a flare.
Way back in the New 52 Supergirl #20, Supergirl, with the help of Power Girl, destroys her Fortress of Sanctuary which had become self-aware and was trying to kill Kara.
BOOM!
Great image!
People may forget that Kara had the solar flare before Superman and had used it a bunch before he did. Interesting that this was also an emotional beat, Kara realizing she couldn't live alone on the ocean floor. There wasn't much I could cheer for in the Michael Alan Nelson run on the character. This Power Girl story was one of them.
Happy 4th of July!
5 comments:
Happy 4 July... but wouldn't you rather be under a lovely Queen (ducks).
"People may forget that Kara had the solar flare before Superman and had used it a bunch before he did."
They do, don't they?
It reminds of people believing the show's "Harum-El" is a nod to Smallville instead of Kara's own comic.
Brainiac also blasted a hole into the Fortress in "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow", but those fireworks weren't so spectacular.
Happy Fourth of July!
Anyone remember Supergirl's private global network of "Pied'a Terres of Solitude"? All financed by the residuals from a sale of benign kryptonian technology to Wayne Enterprises?
I miss those Pied a' Terres....I mean what else would a teenaged girl spend her annuity on? I mean other than a state of the art smartphone :)
JF
Yep. She had an apartment in France that she and Flamebird went to that one time.
That sale to Wayne meant Supergirl didn't need a job and for the most part didn't use a secret identity. I believe that was Supergirl (2004).
I actually liked that Supergirl (2011) had Sanctuary, a fortress of her own. Seemed no more isolated than Superman's fortress.
The AI in the fortress had become very amusing (albeit confused and therefore murderous), but I wish the writers had found a way for Supergirl to fix it beyond blowing it up, to leave behind a potentially humorous ongoing "character." Kind of a "Skeets." An Alfred.
The side-effect of that explosion is that her first nemesis, Simony Tycho, held in stasis, apparently got blown up along with Sanctuary. I don't believe that plot was ever revisited, and perhaps the editors had forgotten he was in there.
(In Rebirth Supergirl #9, TychoTech has a new CEO, who mentions, right in front of Supergirl, that Simon Tycho has disappeared. The CEO says "We have made mistakes," and maybe that has a double meaning, or triple meaning - Supergirl made a mistake killing Tycho, DC made a mistake forgetting that she did, and of course Tycho made mistakes by being a lunatic. Supergirl has a look that could be one of guilt or at least suggests she is remembering - but, drawn by Brian Ching, I can't tell what her face is conveying.)
And looking back at #20 - a droid survived the explosion of Sanctuary, or reconstituted itself, determined to eradicate "not-Kara." So while the Sanctuary was gone, the actual threat it posed survived. But was that plot point ever revisited?
One lasting outcome of the story is that Power Girl got her traditional costume back - fabricated by the murderous Sanctuary itself.
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